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2/07/2014 @ 11:18AM929 views

Why Paris Was Also A Capital Of Watch Fashion In The 1800s

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, innovation in scientific and industrialization fields was all the rage. No place better exemplifies this than Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower. At the time this signature building was erected as the entrance arch to the Paris World’s Fair of 1889, the iron lattice tower’s designer – engineer Gustave Eiffel – was hailed as the prophet of a new form of architecture. Incidentally, it took two years for three hundred workers to put together the 18,038 iron components using two and a half million rivets. Interestingly, the Eiffel Tower was criticized by the citizens of Paris as an eyesore in 1889; today, of course, it is considered striking architectural art.

Zoom in on the tower, and you will note that the sides underneath the first balcony is decorated with 72 names of the city’s scientific heroes, including a gold-colored “Breguet” in 60-centimeter-high letters (the engraving was painted over at the beginning of the twentieth century and restored in 1987 and again 2011).

Thus, it is easy to see that Paris has a lot more historical meaning than “just” its ties to fashion and art. As this image showcasing Louis-François-Clement Breguet proves, the progeny of a Swiss ex-pat was also appreciated in the French capital for his contributions to the advancement of mankind. The grandson of Abraham-Louis Breguet was appointed to the Bureau of Longitudes in 1843 and awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 1845 for his work with watchmaking, physics and telegraphy

Like the Eiffel Tower itself, in Abraham-Louis Breguet’s early years in Paris he was not as appreciated as he would become later. Indeed, today, Breguet, who spent the rest of his life in the French capital after becoming apprenticed to a master watchmaker employed by the Versailles court at the age of 15, can easily be said to have become the most famous watchmaker in history.

Many of Breguet’s horological designs, characteristic elements and concepts have become so ingrained in the DNA of today’s high-quality timepiece that they have literally become the “classic” elements in watchmaking. The hand shape that he used for example, which today is known as Breguet Losange. Then there are the various guilloché patterns used for the dial, but also the case of a pocket watch. (The most classic of these is perhaps what is known as the barleycorn pattern.) And, finally, the case itself, which, typically, had a fluted case band.

The visuals of Breguet’s Classique Chronométrie Reference 7727 contain all three classic visual elements, like all members of the Classique line

Some of these elements – and indeed whole timepieces – became so fashionable that they attracted the attention of two of the most fashion-forward women of the era: Marie Antoinette and Caroline Murat.

France’s famed cake-eating queen is perhaps one of Breguet’s most well-known clients – thanks in great part to a mysterious pocket watch usually known simply as the “Marie Antoinette,” which I’ll come back to in a second – but she wasn’t Monsieur Breguet’s first female client. This honor is reserved for Caroline Murat, otherwise known as the Queen of Naples.

Joachim-Napoléon Murat, king of Naples from 1808 to 1815, was a fashionable, rather flamboyant dresser, and by all accounts a charismatic personality. Indeed, he was known as the Dandy King. It is safe to assume that his wife, Napoléon Bonaparte’s ambitious sister Caroline, was also quite fashion-conscious. According to a document reprinted by the Napoleonic Historical Society of America, Caroline possessed a pure, pale complexion and felt that wearing jewels was disadvantageous to it. Perhaps this is why she became so enamored of the products created by the most prominent watchmaker of the time; Breguet had become the preferred horologist of Europe’s rich, famous and royal.

According to Emmanuel Breguet, historian and descendant of the man considered watchmaking’s greatest personality, Caroline Murat bought her first Breguet at the age of 23 in 1805. Further, by 1814 the watchmaker had sold 34 timepieces to her, including one in 1812 that was his first wristwatch. Additionally, it was a rather complicated wristwatch as it contained a quarter repeater and a mechanical thermometer. Translation: Caroline was ahead of her time in horological fashion. Though she was the Queen of Naples, much of her time was spent in Paris as part of the Napoleonic tribe. Which brings me to its oval case, which decidedly broke from the norm of the round pocket watch. She was apparently a trendsetter, for it was only much, much later in the evolution of wristwatches that manufacturers frequently made “shaped” cases for wristwatches to signify that they were purpose-built and not simply pocket watches with soldered lugs to hold a strap.

Marie Antoinette was, naturally, revolutionary in her haute Parisian fashion style, though she never wore the famed Perpétuelle pocket watch that was commissioned in her name at Breguet’s workshop. Unfortunately, the watch that was ordered to contain every complication known to watchmaking at the time took decades to complete – decades that the ill-fated queen no longer had.

The Perpétuelle, however, has remained the stuff of legend, as it was stolen from a museum in Jerusalem in 1983, where it had peaceably been on display. Breguet’s most famous masterpiece was only recovered some 20 years later, after Swatch GroupSwatch Group chairman Nicolas G. Hayek – Breguet’s modern parent company – had set about making a replica of it in the modern workshops in 2005.

This unexpectedly led to Montres Breguet financing the lion’s share of the massive restoration of Versailles’ Petit Trianon, the palace building that the young Austrian queen called home, which was originally completed in 1768. It came about when Hayek learned that Marie Antoinette’s favorite oak tree was about to be felled. He offered to buy some of its wood to make the box to house the replica of the “Marie Antoinette.” As the story goes, Versailles was happy to offer it for free. Hayek, however, countered by offering to finance the lion’s share of the restoration of the Petit Trianon, which, according to The New York Times, cost $7.34 million.

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The Breguet classic chronometer is one of my favorite watches, it takes my breath away when I look at it. And the comparison with the Eiffel Tower is striking! I recently read on http://www.eiffeltowerguide.com that author Guy de Maupassant detested it that much that he took his lunch there just so he couldn’t see it!